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A customer, also client, buyer or purchaser is the buyer or user of the paid products of an individual or organization, mostly called the supplier or seller. This is typically through purchasing or renting goods or services.
The word derives from "custom," meaning "habit"; a customer was someone who frequented a particular shop, who made it a habit to purchase goods of the sort the shop sold there rather than elsewhere, and with whom the shopkeeper had to maintain a relationship to keep his or her "custom," meaning expected purchases in the future. The word did not refer to those who purchased things at a fair or bazaar, or from a street vendor.
In commercial, market-driven or -oriented organizations, the customer is increasingly seen as the 'raison d'ĂȘtre' of the supplier. This view only gained general adherence in USA from the 1950s, among others through the work of Philip Kotler. In the Toyota Production System it has been pushed to the forefront of all deliberations, in connection with added value.
In Europe the position of the customer has been recognized somewhat later, mainly due to the after effects of the Second World War and the necessary reconstruction.
Since the 1980s the term customer is also used by non-commercial organizations (local governments, hospitals), usually in a top-down effort to institute greater awareness of the goal of the organization: a shift from self-centered to serving. This shift, however, is often criticized, as the customer in a commercial organization has the freedom of choice, which is often absent when he deals with public services.
With the rise of better defined ideas on customers came the customer unions, in general organizations wiith members that help them make choices in an increasingly growing and ever more complicated market.
See also
- Consultative selling
- Customer centricity
- Customer relationship management
- Guided selling
- Service level agreement
